Archive for February 2010

The darkness crumbles away.It is the same old druid Time as ever,Only a live thing leaps my hand,A queer sardonic rat,As I pull the parapet’s poppyTo stick behind my ear.Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knewYour cosmopolitan sympathies.Now you have touched this English handYou will do the same to a GermanSoon, no doubt, if it be your pleasureTo cross the sleeping green between.It seems you inwardly grin as you passStrong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,Less chanced than you for life,Bonds to the whims of murder,Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,The torn fields of France.What do you see in our eyesAt the shrieking iron and flameHurled through still heavens?What quaver–what heart aghast?Poppies whose roots are in man’s veinsDrop, and are ever dropping;But mine in my ear is safe–Just a little white with the dust.

The following is an excerpt from A War Nurse’s Diary: Sketches from a Belgian Field Hospital, published 1918 and now in the public domain.

There’s a whole novel in this story.

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That reminds me of “Ragtime.” I must tell you about him. His real name was de Rasquinet, but, when written hastily on a chart, it looked like ragtime, and was easier to pronounce. People who do not like medical details had better skip the next few lines, but I want people to understand how “Ragtime” suffered. He was twenty-three years old, and had wonderful brown eyes that spoke his gratitude when he was too ill to utter words. He came in with his arm broken in several places and bleeding; in his abdomen were two large wounds which had pierced the intestine in several places. He also had a great wound in the back which had smashed up one kidney. At first he was too collapsed to operate upon. Such was the nature of his wounds that his dressing and the whole of his bed had to be changed at least every two hours. Imagine rolling a man in that condition from side to side. We had very little wool, we had no mackintosh sheets, brown paper was all we had to put under him; we just had to manage with rags which the neighbours supplied.

“Ragtime” was operated on; they cut out several feet of pierced intestine, joined it together and closed up the two wounds in his abdomen. The wound in the back was untouched, as he could stand no more that day. He came back to us and we nursed him with special care, along with the other sixty-nine patients. When we dressed him he never moaned nor groaned, and always gave us his wonderful smile. Then an order came for all patients to go to the station. “Ragtime” went on a stretcher with the rest. After spending twelve hours without food or attention in that draughty place, some of them came back to us, but not “Ragtime.” The lady doctor and I, who attended him, searched every hospital and made every inquiry with no result.

After three days a pitiful little note came from “Ragtime,” saying he was in a huge military hospital, and begging me to visit him. Catholic Sisters were in charge, and the rules were strict; finally we saw him and others who had been dumped there. He cried and implored me not to leave him. He said his wounds had not been dressed for three days! Think of it! When we dressed him it was two-hourly, and it was most necessary. The reason for the neglect was that nuns were not allowed, so I was told, to attend to men-patients below the waist! The lady-doctor went round and pleaded with them to let us have him back, but no, they would not. So I was determined. Mademoiselle and I went round and asked for the General. He was in charge of this great hospital. 1 told him the history of the case, cried and protested with real Belgian emotion, and finally the dear old General began to think that here was real romance! He let me have “Ragtime.” The lady-doctor sent her car and we got him back.

Later on we left him in a hospital in Chent. Months afterwards we had an orderly, an ex-professor from a college. Wishing to join his family at Ghent he returned under the Germans. I sent by him a letter to “Ragtime.” After many weeks a letter was smuggled through to me in Flemish, telling how the orderly had traced him to a certain hospital and he was lying unconscious. This made me feel that he was dying. But after another long lapse of time another man turned up who said that “Ragtime” had just been operated on for his kidney, and had been under chloroform. A year later one of our medical students met his father in a London hospital, a wounded soldier! He said that “Ragtime” was at Liège, convalescent. After the war, I shall make it my task to trace “Ragtime” in Belgium, and find out if he is alive.

Now and again (oh, I lie. I Google myself all the time) I come across a reference to my first Regency chicklit, The Rules of Gentility (HarperCollins, 2007), as a book that “has no sex in it.”Unfailingly it makes me laugh because the book is full of sex. What the book doesn’t have is explicit language describing explicit acts, and there’s a good reason: my characters–who they are and where they are in their lives. But my Regency chicklit does have a very strong subtext of desire and acknowledgment of desire, something which Jane Austen mastered and before whom we must all bow down. Although explicit acts and language are some of the techniques a writer may use, they are not the only ones at our disposal. Would your characters know those words? Those practices?

If they don’t (inexperienced Regency debutante experiencing first London season, for instance), how do you persuade the reader that the scene has an erotic charge and that the heroine is ready for some sexual adventures? Do you turn to a tried and true shortcut? Opens the wrong door, finds the dirty books in the library, is invited to an orgy/brothel…. (Oops, my heroine was invited to a brothel in Rules. Sometimes it doesn’t always take.) Wake me up when they get naked, please.

Now personally I think those devices are cheating. You can argue at length about what a woman would know and when she would know it—-I remember being mildly surprised around the tender age of 14 or so on a family visit to Denmark that the bookstore at the train station had pornography magazines right next to the knitting ones, and much later I realized that this did have an effect on me. We know nicely brought up women in Regency England could see dirty prints large as life in the bookseller’s window, or look down the wrong sort of alley, or indeed open the wrong door—-concepts of privacy then were not the same as ours.

My advice? Use what you have. Don’t hurl your characters into twenty-first century sexuality, but don’t rely too much on historical material either. The Georgians were a sorry lot when it came to sex, to be honest, riddled with guilt, terrified that any activity without a fighting chance of conception would make hair grow on their palms; and convinced women were either virtuous heir-generators or nymphomaniac sluts who sold themselves to satisfy the urges a gentleman’s virtuous wife could not possibly fulfill. There were dozens of colloquialisms for the penis; not so many for female genitalia, and strange. You get the impression that no one had the nerve to go Down There and take a good look (cauliflower, anyone??).

But someone, somewhere, must have been doing it right.

What you do have are great clothes and no underwear for women—-or at least, nothing that couldn’t be easily broached. Drawers were crotchless for decades. And men’s clothes were an education in themselves according to the heroine of my latest release, Improper Relations, displaying “the various bumps, twitches, deflations and inflations on view in any drawing room, with gentlemen’s fashions as they are.” Just like the sixties!You also have the delightful mixture of surprise, guilt, and curiosity that proper Georgians (or improper ones) may experience when they find that sex with someone they like—-or even love—-can be a revelation. Rules can be broken or other set of rules instituted.

“Remove your nightgown,” Shad says. He’s close enough so that I can feel his warmth.

“I beg your pardon?” I clutch the bedclothes to my bosom.

He looks perplexed for a moment. Then, “Remove your nightgown, now.”

“No.”

“Ma’am, a few hours ago you promised to obey me.”

“Well, I’m sure that wasn’t what that vicar was referring to. It’s indecent!”

He shifts further down the bed and props himself on one elbow. With the other hand, just his forefinger, he very lightly strokes my wrist. He whispers, “With my body I thee worship.”

If you’re a historical writer, how do you approach the thorny subject of sex? And if you’re a reader, what makes a sex scene in a historical convincing?

#Thanks, Janet!

Here’s the blurb for Improper Relations:Must a lady always put her husband first?

After losing best friend and cousin Ann Weller in marriage to the Earl of Beresford, sharp-witted Charlotte Hayden is even ruder than usual to potential suitors. Introduced to Beresford’s wayward cousin, Shad, Charlotte may have met her match in witty repartee–but he’s hardly husband material. Caught in a compromising situation, Charlotte and Shad are forced to wed, resigning themselves to a marriage of convenience. And they aren’t the only ones with marital problems… Have both Ann and Charlotte married in haste to repent at leisure? And where do their loyalties really lie? With their husbands, with each other, or somewhere else entirely?

You can buy Improper Relations online at bookdepository.com, with free shipping worldwide.

Check out Janet’s website where you can read more excerpts, hear soundbites, and enter a contest.

So, Westerns. What are the basic elements of a Western? There are the two plots: 1) a stranger comes to town and 2) someone leaves town, heading for a new place. A subsidiary plot involves surviving in the wilderness, whether that’s physical (making a go of a farm or ranch) or emotional (surviving in a corrupt town) – both come under the category of Civilization versus Wilderness. And, usually, there’s some kind of moral conflict going on, whether it’s personal (fighting an enemy) or social (fighting outlaws).There are also, often, a lot of issues relating to representation of Native Americans in many Western romances. I’ve been looking for some critical sources about this issue, so if you know of some, please let me know!

In romance novels, the major conflict must always be the relationship. So in a Western romance, the basic conflicts are usually represented on a personal level. I think that’s why there are so very many Western romances involving an Eastern woman (stranger) traveling to a Western town, where she is often a civilizing influence on a wilderness man, who might be rough-mannered, or an outlaw, or even a civilizing influence on the wilderness himself.Various elements of the Western genre work really well with the structure of a romance novel. Westerns provide a setting and a framework for stories; romances provide a plot structure. The two mesh easily together, like romances with mystery/thrillers.

One thing I think might be specific to Western romances is that the setting can also be a character. Think of Western movies, and all those gorgeous shots of sunset-lit rock and flowing plains. Very often, the stranger character in a romance, usually the woman, falls in love with the landscape she’s met as much as with the man. Often, the man himself is revealed to have a deep love of the landscape in which he lives.

I also find it interesting that Western romances take a genre that’s heavily gendered as male (think of the Western movies you’ve seen) and bend the civilization aspect of the genre towards making a personal home rather than a law-abiding town; making a home is usually gendered female in our society. When the woman’s goals come up against the man’s in a romance, even if he’s a rough and tough hero, usually she comes out the victor in the end, “taming” him, even if on the surface she remains the “little woman.” Conventional as some western romances can be, they can also be subversive.

A while back, my friend Meredith Schwartz edited an electronic anthology titled Alleys and Doorways: Stories of Queer Urban Fantasy for Torguere Press, and I agreed to write an Elspeth Potter story for it. I started that story over twice and eventually abandoned my initial attempt and wrote something completely different in a very limited time period, so it was an interesting experience for me.

Lethe Press has now published a print edition. It’s available on Amazon.com so far. I’m not sure how soon it will be available elsewhere. And, possibly ironically, a Kindle edition as well. I haven’t yet seen my own physical copy, but I really like the cover!“In Alleys & Doorways, editor Meredith Schwartz has brought together stories of the odd and mysterious ways that queer life happens in the city. Covering a wide range of styles, moods and emotions, from the poignant and erotic to the whimsical, these tales from a roster of acclaimed authors strive to create new legends for gay urbanites. Featuring several stories that were finalists for the Gaylactic Spectrum Award, this anthology promises to enchant you. Be wary where you read these stories…that train ride, that bus, that sidewalk may lead you to someplace Else…but be assured that your destination in these new alleys, these new doorways, will be an exciting one!”

I like the fantastic. I like magic and surrealism and being transported to another world by a book. And as anyone who has read pretty much anything I’ve written knows, I like to mix magic, surrealism, and escape with eroticism. But there reaches a point where if the sex itself is too “airy fairy,” if the Vaseline is smeared on the lens too thick, that it simply isn’t hot anymore. This doesn’t mean that what I need is a the literary equivalent of the porn film close-up penetration crotch shot. But what makes fantasy believable, whether it is sexual fantasy or a magical fairyland, is the details. The pathway to the castle is paved with lollipops? Okay, but what kind? All colors? What do they smell like? Does it crunch under your feet? Are they sticky? Does it never rain? Even the most fantastical concept can be made real by getting the details right.

So, imagine our hero and heroine are in bed (or on the couch, kitchen table, backseat of a royal carriage, wherever…). The writer may have made them as perfect as possible, the ultimate wish-fulfillment, but a soaring description of their virtues is not what I find erotic. Where are the details? Sure, they kiss, but how about telling me what the short hairs behind his ear feel like to her lips as she nibbles his neck? What do the sheets feel like on the bottoms of her feet as she slides back on the bed to make room for him? Can she hear anything above her own breath, or his, and if so, what?

The addition of these kinds of details accomplishes many things for me as a writer. First, the smallest thing can be what anchors the reader in the scene as if they are there. They go from watching the action from afar to being right in the bed with them. It can be something as small as mentioning that they had to move more to the center of the bed because they were getting too close to the edge and the reader being able to picture it exactly. That’s all the more important with a fantasy setting or with alien or magical characters whom you still want your reader to identify with.

For example, in the Magic University books, I have some of the characters studying Esoteric Arts, which is a fancy term for sex magic. Some of them are quite powerful, and can literally move the Earth when they have sex, but it’s important to me that the sex our characters have is still fraught with emotional realism, as well as realistic expectations about how it works. Take this scene from the latest book in the series, The Tower and the Tears, in which our hero has been seduced at the Halloween Ball by a mysterious temptress:

There was no music now, but she seemed like she was still dancing as she ran her hands up and down his bare arms, tracing designs with eager-eyed grace. She turned him in a circle and slipped the shoulder of her costume down, baring one breast. She had a tattoo of a tiny dragon near her sternum.

Kyle suddenly knew her for who she was. Ciara. He’d never seen her in makeup before, and he hadn’t realized she was wearing a wig. He reached for her but she flitted away like a butterfly, her hands still moving as she slipped the costume to the floor completely. Then suddenly she twirled close, her hand finding him unerringly under the edge of the toga, cool fingers wrapping around him.

“Ciara,” he whispered.

“Shhh, I’m Ishtar tonight.”

Aha. They hadn’t gotten to studying the goddess of sacred sex in Esoteric Arts class yet, but Kyle had seen the statues. He just nodded and let her undo the knot at his shoulder, the toga falling away. She pushed him back onto the bed and straddled him.

Kyle let her grind against him, then looked up in surprise as she snapped her fingers and a condom still in its wrapper appeared in her hand. Kyle made a mental note to learn some prestidigitation one of these days.

Our hero may have prodigious erotic skill when spellcasting, but he’s a self-conscious college student, too. And just because they can use magic doesn’t absolve our young lovers from needing protection against pregnancy and STDs. I hope my fantasy world is enriched by this realism rather than burdened by it.

Second, details are a chance to characterize. What one character would notice or think about is different from what another one would.This is true whether I am writing in first person or third person, but it especially comes out in the first person, where the narrator’s own voice and attitude can come through in the prose. In my recent Torquere Press novella, Royal Treatment, I use the first person voice to tell the story of Arshan, a young noble in a BDSM-dominated world who finds himself wrapped up in court politics. He’s a dominant, but if he doesn’t play his cards right, might end up collared for life to the crown princess. He’s always looking for the way to understand the people around him and influence them, so both the details he notices and chooses to remember about his allies and enemies both works in the plot and paints a vivid picture for the reader. And I get to provide a very visceral experience close-in on his point of view.

She climbed off and sat back in a chair with a tired exhalation. The fire had long since gone out, and she pulled her robes around her. “You didn’t come,” she said, her eyes narrowing.

“No, my lady. You didn’t give permission,” I said from where I was still lying on the table. I sat up, sensing the mood shifting.

“Arian adepts can orgasm without ejaculation, though,” she said. “How do I know you are not lying?”

I dropped to my knees on the stone in front of her, the open and vulnerable stance again. Now was not the time for cheek. “You don’t. I have no way to prove my innocence, and I accept whatever punishment you set before me.”

She frowned, but not about what I said. “You are like water that flows around a stone,” she said.

“I am sorry if that offends you, my lady.”

She laughed then and reached out to tousle my hair, and for a moment, I felt the difference in our ages. “It does not offend me; it frustrates me,” she said. “Because you know how hard it is to break water? Impossible. Your father was all stone. You are something else.”

Third, fresh and interesting details allow me to avoid cliches and express something unique in each scene. I find this the most important in sex scenes where there are many predictable aspects. As a reader I’m expecting a love scene to have a sort of progression from kissing through to orgasm, usually with some form of penetration in there, depending on the participants. Sure, one of the things I do is make the sex part of the plot. Kyle has a lot of very hot sex as part of his magical training in Magic University. Arshan has not only a lot of sex, but also a lot of BDSM scenes, in Royal Treatment. But when I write a “plain” sex scene, when I’m really just focusing on the erotic connection between the two characters and not what the sex does in the plot, it’s important to find fresh, interesting details to put in.

So maybe it’s not always how their lips taste, but how their shoulder tastes. Maybe it’s not about the satin sheets but what shape the blanket has been mashed into by the end. Maybe it’s not what the characters say (I will never, ever have a character say “oh baby” in a sex scene, except, perhaps, as a joke…!) but what they choose not to say while making love.

These are the things that make a situation and a character feel real to me, and something more than just a “fantasy.” I feel like they might step right out of the page they are so real, and I hope the reader feels the same way.

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Thanks, Cecilia!!!

Cecilia Tan has been writing professionally since she was a teenager, which she definitely isn’t, anymore. She is the author of several romances for Ravenous Romance, including her “Harry Potter for adults” the Magic University series and Mind Games, as well as the BDSM sci-fi adventure Royal Treatment just released from Torquere Press. Her literary erotica has been published nearly everywhere. She loves tea, baseball, cats, and books, and more of her thoughts on these and other subjects can be found at her blog: http://blog.ceciliatan.com/.

I didn’t really start thinking about paragraphing – consciously – until a couple of years ago.

My writers’ workshop was critiquing one of my pieces. I don’t remember if it was a short story or a novel, or even exactly when the meeting took place. But I clearly remember John pointing out that I’d “stepped on my own ending.” He’d made this comment before, I think, to someone else at a different time, and twice was enough for it to stick, because he was right. I’d written an excellent ending sentence for a paragraph, then I’d stepped on it by following with another, weaker sentence.(photos from brickartist.com)

I think that principle applies on the sentence level and chapter level as well, but the paragraph is the most important.

Think of it this way: it’s good to end a chapter on a cliffhanger, so the reader wants to continue. Every sentence can’t end dramatically, because that would wear the reader out pretty quickly. Also, most readers don’t read every word separately; they tend to comprehend groups of words simultaneously. Our eyes tend to skim, snagging on what’s important.

Paragraphs are set apart from each other, and can visually snag the reader’s eye at beginning and end. Don’t waste that.

Note that I’m mostly thinking of non-dialogue paragraphs here. Dialogue brings in some of the same issues, but also some different ones.

Paragraphing makes a real difference in prose rhythm.

I can think of multiple methods to end a paragraph dramatically. The first one is to use a single-sentence paragraph, as I did above. That gets annoying if you do it too often, but it can be very effective in small doses. It emphasizes the sentence both visually and in the reader’s head. It can induce a brief pause to consider.Second, the cliffhanger. End the paragraph with a question in the reader’s mind, so she wants to go forward to the next paragraph. “He fell.” What happened next?

Third, the unexpected twist, perhaps a contrast to what’s gone before, or an additional, vivid detail. “Beneath all the finery, however, his feet were bare and filthy, with clawed yellow toenails.” This, also, can induce a small pause or slowing of the prose rhythm.

I don’t think drama is always necessary. The paragraph is also a unit of organization. Breaking the paragraph after the room is described, or after a unit of action, is just as valid and serviceable. Repeated dramatic paragraph endings take away from the technique’s effectiveness, and make Strunk and White cry.

I began to write seriously in the tenth grade, but like all teenagers, would have benefited from looking up “seriously” in the dictionary, despite using the word on a frequent basis. I was convinced I would be a writer one day and majored in English Lit to prepare, but life soon beat me down to the point where I put writing away. Forever. Too impractical. Too hard. Not good enough.

Then I married someone who looks to the future. We started having conversations about where we wanted to be in five years, ten years, and it wasn’t at the corporate middle management job where I collected a paycheck. We read articles about following your passion, talked about what kind of business we would open if we came into some money. I didn’t think about writing again until my husband called me at work and told me his mother couldn’t provide daycare for our kids any longer and what did I want to do?

In a flash, I realized writing was my passion and if I wanted to make my passion a career, I had to quit the day job and take it seriously. So I did.

I jokingly told a writer friend that I write to discover my identity. I guess I wasn’t kidding. There are so many people inside me writhing to get out, people who have more courage than I do, people who make more mistakes because they aren’t afraid to take risks. People who are at the cusp of discovering themselves and still have the optimism to be successful at whatever they try. I can be a skydiver, a surgeon, a thief, a fairy, a man – anything I want – when I’m putting fingers to the keys.

I love to read and the capacity of a book to transport you into another world is unparalleled in anything I’ve experienced thus far in life. I want to create that for others. My dream is to have a reader tell me they were moved by my writing and they couldn’t put it down; this motivates me in a way nothing else could.

I’ve had great successes and strides in the last year since I became a serious writer. Last year, I completed the book I started in college, and then wrote another one. I placed fifth in the first writing contest I entered, which was quite surprising. I’ve learned more in the last year than the prior years combined. My biggest failure is not pouring effort into every last available second, because that’s writing time I can’t get back.

Connections in life, and writing, are paramount and often serendipitous. One of my professors encouraged me to attend a writer’s conference. I knew no one there, but started talking to the girl seated next to me and we’ve been critique partners on and off for over fifteen years now. I have more recently enjoyed the great people at Romance Divas and found support, friendship and accountability, which I find to be critical in this business.

I’ve learned I need time to process comments on my writing. My first reaction, upon learning the comments are not “It’s perfect! I loved it!,” is to give up, like I did many years ago, but if I allow myself time to be mad, cry, and get out all the negative self-doubt, I can then start editing. I have an image in my head of writing something perfectly the first time I touch it and that’s just not reality, at least not for me. I have to remind myself even the published writers I adore are not universally accepted as being great, and fiction is subjective.

My journey has brought me to tears. To a place where I feel consumed by the things inside me bursting to be free. To indescribable frustration because I’ve worked so hard for so long and I’m still not published. To great heights when I’m really “on.”

I take pride in my accomplishments of the last year. I’ve finished two books and I have a plan to write two more in 2010. I’ve started thinking of myself as a writer and telling people I write. This is a huge piece of identity I am thrilled to have embraced and is the key for new writers. So the best advice I can give someone else is print this out and hang it up: I am a writer.